Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Members will recall that we had a brief discussion about the reconstitution of the Policing Board previously. The next reconstitution is due to take place by May 2015, which marks the end of the current four-year appointment term for independent members.

A range of options was considered, and the Minister has decided to not reappoint existing eligible independent members automatically. Instead, he will reconstitute the board and appoint independent members by way of a public appointment process by May. Members who are eligible to apply for a second term may do so. The Minister also proposes to adopt a rolling appointments model for independent members, effective from 2017, whereby, every year, three independent members would be appointed or reappointed. That would end the current arrangements, whereby nine independent members are appointed or reappointed every four years. Revised remuneration rates for the 2015 competition, to reflect a more appropriate level, are also proposed.

The Minister has stayed with us. I welcome from the Department Anthony Harbinson, the director of the safer communities directorate, and Rosemary Crawford, the deputy director of the policing policy and strategy division. I advise you that the session will be recorded by Hansard.

The session came about as the result of a little bit of confusion, particularly around the rolling reappointment procedure. A concern was highlighted by a Committee member that, every year, you could pick and choose which members would leave rather than have a third, third and third type of system that works on many boards to keep capacity. Minister, do you want to brief us on some of your proposals? We will then open up the meeting to questions and get some clarification.

Mr Ford (The Minister of Justice): Thank you, Chair. You have set out some of the key points and saved me the first page of my notes. If my voice lasts, I will set out some of the key points and then answer any questions.

You highlighted the issue of the two changes. The first change is to the arrangements for appointing independent members. The Committee will be aware that, under the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, responsibility for appointing independent members of the Policing Board falls to me as Minister. The legislation provides for nine independent members to be appointed for a term of up to four years, and they may be reappointed for a second term.

The current board is due to be reconstituted in the summer, when the independent members' term expires. Until now, we have had a situation in which independent members have been appointed following the Assembly elections, when the political make-up of the board is known. The extension of the Assembly term — the introduction of a five-year mandate — has effectively decoupled the current arrangements for independent members from those that apply to political members. That is not of my making, and we are seeking to deal with the situation that we are in. It is a consequence of the decision on the Assembly, but it provides the opportunity to consider how we appoint the independent members. My concern is to ensure that we have the board appointing efficiently and effectively and that we have the necessary skills and build-up of experience to hold the Chief Constable robustly to account. It is important that we have best public appointments procedures in place. I have a specific responsibility on the Policing Board, which is almost unique to the board, to maintain community balance. It is vital, both in practice and in perception, to generate the community confidence that the board needs.

Under the existing arrangements, political parties can change their membership at any time, and they frequently do, as you know, Chair. In contrast, we have the nine independent members appointed once en bloc for a four-year term, which has an impact on the cohesion and continuity of the board. It risks the loss of the skills, experience and knowledge that has been built up at the end of that four-year term. The classic example was the most recent reconstitution, in 2011, when, of the 19 members, only one political member and two independent members had previously served on the board. The two independent members were the outgoing chair and vice chair, but everybody else was new. It resulted in a significant loss of knowledge and experience. Learning from that, we are trying to look now in these changed circumstances, because of the Assembly change, at how we deal with that, building on the good work that current independent members have done over the past four years and acknowledging that it takes time for people to get to grips with the work of the board.

Therefore, there were four options considered in the consultation paper. I am currently minded to move away from that wholesale change every four years in favour of more gradual and phased appointments to ensure greater continuity for the board, not the complete loss of knowledge and experience that can otherwise happen every four years, and to provide new talent and fresh opportunities to come forward on more regularly. It is a proposal that is supported by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. He has stated that it should provide a fair, merit-based and effective means of appointment. It is the staggered approach that is now used, as you said, Chair, by a number of other bodies.

There are various possible permutations. I shall not bore the Committee with all that we considered before we put proposals forward, but I think that the simplest one is the proposed model based on three-year terms, which effectively would mean that, once we got into that system, each year, three of the nine independent, members, or one third, would be appointed or reappointed, with six continuing in office for a further year or two before they came to that point. Each person would be eligible for appointment for a second term, which is the standard Commissioner for Public Appointments in Northern Ireland arrangement for public appointments — one or two terms.

I believe that it gives the opportunity to maintain community confidence, which is a point that was made strongly by the independent members on 14 January. It maintains a continuity of experience and skills and ensures that people can see that that experience is built up and that there is a robust holding-to-account and overseeing of the work done by the Police Service. That is the key point on that.

I will speak briefly on the issue of remuneration. It is clear that the current rates that are paid to members of the Policing Board are very significantly in excess of those payable to members of any other public body across Northern Ireland. In the challenging financial environment, I do not believe that they are sustainable. What I have proposed is a more affordable, realistic level of remuneration. I believe that the rates are in line with those paid to other public bodies in Northern Ireland and are more appropriate and sufficient to continue to attract the individuals of the calibre that we need for the role.

Therefore, I think that the proposals in the consultation paper will ensure greater cohesion and continuity of experience. They will ensure that the board has the necessary skills and knowledge to hold the Chief Constable and the PSNI to account, to take best practice of public appointments into account and to do it in a fair, merit-based and effective manner.

I welcome the issues that have been raised by the Committee. At this stage, I am keen to hear its views on how the process should be run.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Thank you, Minister. I must say that I think that the rolling model is a sensible approach to keep capacity on the board.

Obviously, you have to be cognisant of the community balance of independent members at any one time, so, during any of the appointments on a yearly basis, you have to ensure that the overall balance remains representative of the community. It is not the case that, incrementally, over time, the community balance would shift. At any one time, the community balance has to be reflected. Is that right?

Mr Ford: At any one time, the membership of the board has to be representative of the community. For example, there were problems last time when one of the 10 political members was female. I appointed three females out of nine, which was a higher proportion of females appointed than had come through the selection process, in an attempt to improve that aspect of the community balance.

Obviously I also have to take into account at least elements of geography and, in this society, the perceived community background of those who serve on the board. The reality, in this society, is that the balance of those appointed from amongst MLAs is unlikely to change very significantly election by election. However, it does provide the opportunity to keep the balance broadly correct. I do not think that we can stick everybody into a rigid pigeonhole, but it gives us that opportunity. If corrections need to be made, they can be made sooner than after four years, which is the current position.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): OK, that is clear enough.

Mr McGlone: Talk me through this again, so that I hear the rationale of it. Yes, sometimes elected members dip off and on, but the legislation allows for an elected member to be there for five years, if the new term is five years, but not an independent member.

Mr Ford: They will have a three-year term that is renewable, so a maximum of six years.

Mr McGlone: My point is that they may or may not be. What is the difference between an elected member and an independent member in terms of experience, wherewithal, the knowledge that is needed and the like — aside from the obvious one?

Mr Ford: The answer to that is that I can do nothing about the elected members. Well, sorry, I can do something about one of the elected members at present. The reality is that I do not see how it would be possible to manage the issue of the elected members. Those are issues for the parties to consider when nominating officers put names forward. The appointment of independent members to the board is along the lines of any other body appointed by the public appointments procedure. We are looking to the best possible arrangement for those nine.

Mr Anthony Harbinson (Department of Justice): The other point is that things have changed already. Under the current legislation, independent members can only have a four-year term, but political members have a five-year term, so you automatically have a gap. If you run it on, the next time it will be three and five, and the next time it will be two and five.

Mr McGlone: With the greatest respect to Mr Harbinson, the obvious thing to do is to make them coterminous; make them the same.

Mr Harbinson: That would require a change to primary legislation.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): At present, there is no limit on how many terms a political member can serve, so effectively you already have that scenario with political members being treated differently.

Mr McGlone: The obvious question is "What you are doing to harmonise the two?".

Mr Ford: That assumes that harmonisation is a prerequisite, as opposed to what we are seeking to do, which is to provide refreshment and balance between those amongst the independent members who are relatively new and those who have served longer periods, so that people gradually build up the expertise that we need.

Mr McGlone: What consultation has been done around this issue?

Mr Ford: The formal consultation that I was required to do was with the First Minister, the deputy First Minister and the local councils, which I interpreted in this case as both the 26 existing councils and the 11 shadow councils. We then consulted more widely with the members of the board, the ombudsman — Rosemary will keep me right as to the full list.

Ms Rosemary Crawford (Department of Justice): The Commissioner for Public Appointments, this Committee and some other key stakeholders, including the Police Service, the Police Ombudsman, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) and the Equality Commission.

Mr McGlone: That was your statutory 12-week consultation; was it?

Ms Crawford: It was a targeted consultation that started on 19 December. Partly driven by the fact that, in order to make the appointments on time, we needed to make sure that we consulted, got views and planned the appointment process, it had initially been intended that the consultation would close on 16 January. However, a number of people, particularly the independent members of the board, indicated that they needed longer, not least because it was over the Christmas and new year period.

Mr McGlone: Can you give me those dates again, please, Rosemary?

Ms Crawford: Yes. The consultation was launched on 19 December, and it was extended to 30 January.

Mr McGlone: But it was to close on 16 January.

Ms Crawford: Yes.

Mr McGlone: So, there was not much consultation around Christmas and new year.

Mr Ford: Significantly more people were consulted than the statutory obligation.

Mr McGlone: The statutory obligation is, what, four weeks over the Christmas and new year period?

Mr Ford: There is nothing in the technical statutory requirements that says that that is not adequate for —

Mr McGlone: But that is what you have done. Many of us have stood up in the House and accused people of launching consultations in the mouth of a holiday period, when the Assembly is just about to go into recess and all that. This was worse than that. The Assembly was already in recess, and we were into the mouth of the Christmas period.

Ms Crawford: The statutory consultation was with the First Minister, the deputy First Minister and the district councils. As the Minister said, we extended it beyond that. It is a fair point and one that was made to us by some members. We accepted that point and extended it to the end of January on that basis.

Mr McGlone: For a fortnight. You are aware that councils do not meet in December after the date that you gave. Councils usually meet in the first or second week of December.

Mr Ford: From my background knowledge, I expected that every council would have had a meeting in January —

Mr McGlone: Of course they would —

Mr Ford: — and had the opportunity to comment on that.

Mr McGlone: — and you are giving them a couple of weeks to consult. I am sorry, but I do not accept this period of consultation. Normally, you get 12 weeks and it is not launched in the mouth of Christmas or new year.

Mr Ford: Given the necessity to get arrangements under way in order to make the appointments this year, there was a limited time in which to do it.

Mr McGlone: If there was a limited time, I have to think that you would have started a wee bit earlier. Has a full equality impact assessment (EQIA) been done on this?

Mr Ford: No. Why would there need to be?

Mr McGlone: If your aims and objectives are in relation to the balance of appointments and appointees, I would have thought that you would consider the implications of it.

Mr Ford: Why does appointing people in three tranches make any difference to the equality aspects that I am legally obliged to do, however members are appointed?

Mr McGlone: Sorry, but you said that you wanted the correct balances. I would have thought that it would be important that you do the likes of that, particularly if it winds up, with all respect, in a higgledy-poggledy type of mess, where you appoint for a year or maybe two years or three years.

Mr Ford: Any process that has that type of phased appointment has to have a starting point.

Mr McGlone: Yes, and you would want to make sure that you get it right.

Mr Ford: That is exactly what we have done.

Mr McGlone: Well, with the greatest of respect, Minister, it was not a good start to have a couple of weeks' consultation,

Mr Ford: On the equality issue, we consulted the Equality Commission. However, there was no reason to do an EQIA on this, and no concerns have been raised by the Equality Commission.

Mr McGlone: So you are not doing an equality impact assessment on it, no?

Mr Ford: Can you explain why there would be an equality impact assessment of the way in which people are appointed when there is a statutory requirement to have regard to the appropriate community balances?

Mr McGlone: That is for your officials to advise you on, but I would have thought —

Mr Ford: I am asking for your comments since you seem unhappy about it.

Mr McGlone: Obviously, I am not happy about it because it seems a bit of a mess already, to be honest with you. It is interesting nonetheless: the consultation, the absence of an EQIA and one thing and another —

Mr Ford: Sorry, if you have screened things out and there is no equality or differential impact and you have consulted the Equality Commission, why would you do an EQIA?

Mr McGlone: Sorry, my point is that you are launching into something that is completely new terrain. You are launching into something that is not even coterminous with the appointment of elected members. At the very start, Mr Harbinson said that, if you want to harmonise things, you harmonise things. This is making a big distinction between the appointment period of elected members and independent members. I really do not think that it is going to wind up in consistency. Rather, it is going to wind up in a bit of a mess.

Mr Ford: Sorry, explain why. You keep saying that it is a mess, but you have not explained why it is a mess.

Mr McGlone: I thought that I had outlined that. Five years, two years, three years, one year: if that is not a recipe for —

Mr Ford: Sorry, umpteen public bodies have phased appointment procedures, and they are not a mess. Are you suggesting that Invest NI is a mess because people are appointed at different times?

Mr McGlone: I have to say that I take this one very seriously. Our own party, like yours, was there during the negotiations on the Good Friday Agreement and the Patten proposals for a Policing Board that is accountable to the community. The approach up until now really has been whatever you are having yourself, including the consultation period. I treat it very seriously, Minister. If the issue had been to rectify imbalances and to harmonise appointments to the board, I would have thought that you would have wanted to harmonise all appointment periods to make sure that everybody is —

Mr Ford: But you cannot harmonise all appointment procedures, because five party nominating officers can vary it at any time.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Just to clarify that point, at present, many parties rotate Policing Board membership on an annual basis, so those political members will serve for only one year whereas independent members will serve for their full term of four years.

Mr McGlone: But likewise they can serve up to five years.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Political members have no restrictions at all.

Mr Harbinson: It is a four-year maximum at the moment. Politicians can go on for five years.

Mr A Maginness: Under the current statute.

Mr McGlone: Minister, I really do not understand where you are coming from on this one at all.

Mr Ford: I cannot see why you imagine that there is such merit in appointing independent members for the same period of time as politicians when we have highlighted the problems with changing everybody at once — for example, a board starting off four years ago with only three out of 19 people who had served on it before — as opposed to the opportunity to build up expertise. As the Chair has just said, the fact is that, between them, five nominating officers can change 10 members at a whim.

Mr McGlone: Believe it or not, it happens in an Assembly too.

Mr Harbinson: There is also no change to who can come forward and apply. The only thing that we are varying here is the length of time that they can spend on it in their first term and then their second term. There is no impact on who can apply as regards gender, creed, political background or disability. Everybody can still apply in exactly the same way as they could before. The only thing that we are changing is that, instead of having up to a maximum of two four-year terms, they will have a maximum of two three-year terms. So I am not sure —

Mr McGlone: So you could be on there for six years.

Mr Harbinson: Yes.

Mr McGlone: Under the proposals, an elected member could be on it for up to five years.

Mr Ford: No, an elected member can be on it forever.

Mr McGlone: Yes, if they were reappointed again. However, what I mean is that, if you are appointed, the duration is five years for the proposed new term of the Assembly. Within that, you then have the various permutations whereby someone could be on it for one year, two years, three years.

Mr Ford: No, once the process is running, independent members will be appointed for three years, and possibly reappointed so that they do six years. It is not permutations of one, two, three.

Mr Harbinson: It is three or six. It is not one, two, three.

Mr Dickson: You do not understand, Patsy, and you are making a pig's ear of it.

Ms Crawford: Just to clarify, the consultation paper talked about the transitional period. To get us into the process, there may be appointments for two, three or four years.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): It is the same as an Invest Northern Ireland or Northern Ireland Tourist Board-type arrangement where —

Mr A Maginness: Stewart thinks you do not understand.

Mr McGlone: Stewart thinks that I do not understand.

Mr Dickson: With respect, Chair, it is a perfectly simple and competent process that is used to appoint people throughout the public sector.

Mr McGlone: Very good, but it does not seem to be that simple among the community, because there is —

Mr Dickson: The community seems to understand it everywhere else.

Mr McGlone: Sorry, I am reflecting concerns in the community about the process, the approach, the lack of consultation, and the mixed messages that have been sent out as a consequence. I will leave it at that.

Mr McCartney: Had you received any analysis or report saying that the current set-up was not working?

Mr Ford: I have discussed with officials ways of ensuring that the board works as effectively as possible. I have discussed with the current independent members of the board the potential for a change to the appointment process.

Mr McCartney: That is not quite the question that I asked. Did anyone tell you that the current set-up, which has been in place for 10 or whatever number of years, is not working properly?

Mr Ford: I have seen for myself the difficulties of what happens when you change almost a complete board in one go.

Mr McCartney: But there was no official analysis. Nobody has stepped in and said that the board, as regards how it is constituted, its capacity or doing its job in a corporate way, is doing anything improperly.

Mr Harbinson: Nobody is suggesting that anyone is doing anything improperly, but the trigger for this is that we now do not have coterminosity with the Assembly period, so the board has to be renewed in May this year. That was the trigger point for looking at it. When we did that, we looked back, as you would expect, to see what had been the successes, weaknesses and failures, and one fact that we looked at was that, the last time we reconstituted the board, out of 19 members who went forward to the new board, only three had previous experience. That was 16 members with absolutely no experience, and every member, both political and independent, would say that there is a big learning curve in going on to the board and learning what the PSNI and the justice system do. This was to try to avoid those cliffhanging phases, and it is only out for consultation. We put the paper out to ask people for their thoughts.

Mr McCartney: I know that it is out, but there could have been a mechanism to reappoint independent members. A straight reappointment process for independent members would have given you more stability.

Mr Ford: There is a potential reappointment process. Two of the current nine members could not be reappointed this year because they are finishing their second term, but there is a danger that, if we appoint seven, they could all fall off the cliff in one go at the next changeover period. Potentially, even one or two of the two new ones might not stay, and so you would run into the problem that, frankly, we have seen in a number of public bodies.

Mr McCartney: But an impression is given here that the only way or the best way — I assume that compliance with policy on public appointments as set out by the Commissioner for Public Appointments applies to the board as it is currently constituted. You can make that statement about the current provision.

Mr Ford: It is compliant, but my understanding is that the commissioner's recommendation is that the phased rolling appointment process is better.

Mr McCartney: I have not seen that. I will maybe have to see that because, in November, you appointed members of the Probation Board for fixed terms. There was no rolling process in the Probation Board.

Mr Harbinson: It is an NDPB. Yes, you are right, it is set up in a different way.

Mr McCartney: So, if there is an idea that this is best practice, you had an opportunity in your Department in November to say, "This is how we do it in this Department and so we will bring it in for the Probation Board". The Youth Justice Agency appoints five independent members on a fixed term.

Mr Harbinson: No, it does not.

Mr McCartney: Then you need to update your —

Mr Harbinson: It has two.

Mr McCartney: There are two and then another three, according to your website.

Mr Harbinson: The website must be wrong. Apologies for that. It is two.

Mr McCartney: Are those two for a fixed term?

Mr Harbinson: Yes, they were.

Mr McCartney: So the idea of a fixed term is not an anomaly for the Policing Board.

Mr Harbinson: No, the anomaly for the Policing Board is the elected representatives who are on the board directly, and their coterminosity has now been changed.

Mr McCartney: Yes, and it could have been corrected by just making them coterminous. The board seems to be working well, and I think that it would be a bad error of judgement to present the Policing Board as just another publicly appointed body. We all know the importance of it in relation to policing and in terms of confidence in the community, and this type of tinkering can lead people to believe that perhaps people are sometimes not happy with the way the board performs and that this is a way of disrupting its work.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): But the individual independent members are still appointed for a fixed term.

Mr Harbinson: Yes, for three years.

Mr McCartney: It could be five years, and then you would not have this rolling process, which means that, after three years, you can decide that somebody is no longer suitable. When you sit down as a board and work collectively — we have seen it in practice — people might have their criticisms of it, but at least people grow together. We have seen it in Committees and we would admit ourselves that, after two years of being on a Committee, when you move to another one, it takes you a long while to catch up, and you can sometimes feel overawed by the experience of the people around the table. That has a weakness as well.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): There is a general drift towards this sort of set-up in boards though.

Mr McCartney: The drift might be OK — I am not doubting that — but the Policing Board is a different animal from any other public appointments, and tinkering with it can lead people to the suspicion that perhaps people are not happy with the make-up of the board. Sometimes independent members are perhaps too independent, and, therefore, if you are on a three-year lease, you are out after three years. That does not send a very good signal when the framers of Patten had it that the independent members would be there for the same term as all other members. Now you are telling us that they can have different —

Mr Poots: They could be there for longer.

Mr McCartney: Of course, they can be there for longer, but that is not the point. They could be there for a shorter time too; it works both ways. I have not heard you say that what is already there is not broken. It is the old adage; if it is not broken, why would you want to fix it? I do not think that you have provided a rationale to fix it.

Mr Harbinson: It is broken at the moment. It is broken insofar as there is no longer coterminosity.

Mr McCartney: There are a lot of things around the extra year. We had to put together a budget and we had to make other appointments because of the five years. I think that we can get round the table and come up with a solution to have it as it once was.

Mr Harbinson: Yes, that can be done through primary legislation.

Mr McCartney: The other suspicion, which Patsy touched on — I say this with great respect — is that it is nearly the script for 'Yes, Minister'. "When do you have a consultation?" "On 19 December." I do not think that "Number 2s" would even be as bad as that. It is that type of thing that allows people to say that there was a consultation on 19 December. Someone phoned me the next day to ask whether it was out for consultation and I had to admit that I had never heard of it. None of us on the Justice Committee were told that this was coming. The Minister said before —

Mr Ford: Strictly speaking, according to the legislation, we did not need to tell the Justice Committee at all. Do not say that we are not consulting when we are actually consulting significantly wider than we are legally obliged.

Mr McCartney: That is fine, but if you are trying to convince people, perhaps the best way to do that is to work along with them rather than have people feeling that you are trying to do something with a sleight of hand. If any other Department tried this, people would quite legitimately be saying that that is the recipe. We have heard about consultations over the summer. Ministers get slated for saying that they are going to have an eight-week consultation that starts on 1 August. We have all said it — perhaps about other Ministers, and we defend our own Minister, and that is fine — but in the public perception there is a time to consult and a time not to consult.

Mr Ford: The concept is a narrow, targeted consultation that went significantly beyond the statutory obligation. It is not a public consultation about a major policy change or the potential introduction of legislation. It is a consultation that went beyond those whom we were obliged to consult.

Mr McCartney: I say this with the greatest respect; in terms of the Policing Board, the sensitivity would be different. The Policing Board is not, with respect, INI or the Tourist Board. This is a very rock-solid component of Patten. Even with the discussion around where the PCSPs and the DPPs are going, a lot of people were sensitive around it because they are the confidence-building measures that people look to in order to say, "That is how we are protected in terms of policing." To tinker with that, you have to have great judgement and there are aspects of this that, to me, show poor judgement.

Mr Frew: This is not necessarily a question-and-answer session, and I recognise that the Minister asked for our views. I am sure that the Committee will —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I get the sense that he is regretting that.

Mr Frew: I am sure that the Minister will hear the view of the Committee overall on it shortly. I heard someone say that an independent member can be too independent. I find that staggering. Patsy used the phrase "higgledy-poggledy", which is a great word; it is amazing.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): It is two words.

Mr Frew: Well, you can join them together. I am completely relaxed with this. To me, this is a roll-out of how public agencies should do things. To argue that an independent member or three will be completely overwhelmed or overawed in a scenario where everybody else around them has had a level of experience and support or training in the recent past is very, very weak for a number of reasons. You have to start somewhere.

I would rather start somewhere where I know that the people around me have experience in and knowledge of the situations and topics that we are talking about. I would feel really nervous and worried if I did not really know what I was talking about and realised that nobody else around the table knew what they were talking about. Sometimes, I feel that way in Committee.

It is vital that we move forward. The last thing that we want is a period of about one and half to two years every five years in which we lose all capacity, all experience and all expertise. That is not being disrespectful to any new appointees, because we all have to start somewhere. There is no doubt that, on something like the Policing Board, there will be a massive learning curve and huge experience to be gained.

If we treat the Policing Board as something special or different, I think that we are dooming it to failure. It is there to do a specific role, and no other body has a role like it. However, do not treat it as though it is some sort of Golden Fleece or panacea that has to be retained in a concrete form forever and a day. It is just like Patten. Things will have to move and be adjusted as time and budgets dictate. We cannot keep it in the Stone Age or on a tablet of stone. Things have to evolve, and the board must have the agility to evolve. I think that this adds agility to the whole concept.

I have one question, if you are interested in questions, Minister, on the appointments made at the very start. We will have to move to another system, and there will be a period of flux. Appointments will be made by random selection of members who will sit on the board for terms of two, three or four years. Will they be purely random or will there be a point-scoring mechanism whereby those who get more points will be the four-year term members?

Mr Ford: No. My understanding is that the most justifiable way of appointing people in the circumstances in which some existing members will be reappointed and others will not is not to say that, because the former have been around, we will give them a shorter term. It will be a random draw. It is slightly bizarre, but it is more justifiable than many other ways of trying to assess it.

Mr Frew: Yes, because, if you had a point-scoring mechanism, you could argue that the best person would get the highest points and become a four-year term member rather than a two-year term member. That would give it a —

Mr Ford: I recently made appointments, and I was, effectively, obliged to take the recommendations that came to me in order of merit and appoint from the top. Given the key requirement to create balance on the Policing Board, it is not a matter of doing that. That is why the random process is by far the fairest and most appropriate. That element — who gets two years, who gets three years and who gets four years — applies only to the first go. Once it gets going, people will be on three-year terms.

Mr Frew: OK. As I said, for the record, I am content and quite comfortable with it. Some members might feel that there is some sort of Trojan horse involved, but I am very relaxed about it.

Mr Douglas: I have a few things that I would like to clarify. Is it OK to go on to the rate of remuneration?

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Yes.

Mr Douglas: I have the list of new rates, and I see that you have reduced the remuneration of independent members to £12,000. Is that right?

Ms Crawford: Yes.

Mr Ford: Yes, the ordinary members will get £12,000.

Mr Douglas: Will you explain the rationale behind that figure? It is stated, for example, that members have to serve for 48 days a year, but, from my time on the Policing Board, I know that it is certainly more than 48 days. I was told by a member of the SDLP that I could be there for two days a week. Reading the papers for the board meeting takes four or five hours, apart from anything else. Secondly, the rate stated is £404 a day. Is that still the rate? Is that what it will be?

Mr Harbinson: There is no daily rate at the moment; that is just the equivalence. Board members currently get £19,437 per annum.

Mr Douglas: OK, but that is based on a rate.

Mr Harbinson: It has just been a figure until now; it has not been based on a daily rate.

Mr Douglas: It says here that it is a member's daily rate.

Mr Harbinson: We have said that 48 is the standard number of days a year and calculated how much that would be, per day, as an average.

Mr Douglas: I agree with over 99% of what Paul said. However, I disagree with one thing. I look down the list of other organisations. The Policing Board is different from a security point of view. I do not know whether any of those other organisations would have had a 500-lb bomb left outside its premises. It is a big commitment for people, including the politicians. It is a very responsible, but quite dangerous, job. I am surprised by the reduction in salary from £19,000 to £12,000, given that people will do a minimum of 48 days a year, and, as I said, it is certainly more than that.

Mr Ford: There are two possible comparators. I take your point about security issues, Sammy. On the other hand, if you look at something like a health and social care trust, given that Edwin is sitting beside you, the level of responsibilities that can apply to a board member there are pretty significant. My understanding is that the chair of the Belfast Trust is paid £35,000 a year, which equates to something like £220 a day. You may disagree on the number of days worked, but that is less than the nominal rate for ordinary members of the Policing Board. When you look at the sort of challenges that apply across the health and social care system at the moment, I am not sure that there is that big a difference between the trusts and the Policing Board. Certainly, what we are proposing is broadly comparable with the only equivalent policing body in the UK — the Scottish Police Authority. As England and Wales now have police and crime commissioners, there is no comparison with that single full-time salaried person.

Mr Douglas: Minister, maybe what is driving my question is the security aspect and the personal security of the people who join a board like this. You are right in saying that it is not like any other policing board across the United Kingdom. They are similar in most areas, but not with regard to people's personal security.

How did you arrive at the reduction from £19, 000 to £12,000? Is that in comparison with the other —

Mr Ford: It was by looking at a comparison across other public boards in Northern Ireland.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Thank you very much, Minister. Sorry, you cannot get away just yet. Patsy has a question.

Mr Elliott: He wants the consultation reopened.

Mr McGlone: What consultation? I have a question about the harmonisation of the term and bringing it up to five years. You mentioned legislation. What would be the time frame?

Mr Harbinson: It depends on how long it would take us to find a suitable Bill to take it through, plus whatever time it takes to go through the normal parliamentary process. You could be talking anywhere from one to three years. It would not be in this mandate; it would have to be in the following mandate.

Mr McGlone: I appreciate that. Paragraph 15 states that, under the transitional arrangements:

The earlier argument was on experience and so on. Random selection —

Mr Harbinson: That is the method recommended by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Doing otherwise would bring in a lot of subjectivity: why did I give one person a two-year term and another a four-year term? Unfortunately, to get to a three-year rolling term for every future appointment, we had to stagger it in some way. We could have gone for terms of one, two and three years, but we decided that two, three and four years was a better way to make sure that anybody coming on to the board got a reasonable period. In the round, if completely new members come on, they can get a term of two, three or four years. If they are appointed a second time, it means that they would do a maximum of five, six or seven years. An existing member will already have done four years, so it means that he or she would do a maximum of six, seven or eight years. Everybody should be in roughly the same territory.

Mr McGlone: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Raymond, be very, very quick.

Mr McCartney: We support the remuneration proposal as laid out by the Department.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): You can all escape this time. Get out quickly before another hand goes up somewhere.